pdf  Retiree News & Views - Jan/Feb 2015 From left, Winston George, deputy director, Retiree Division, joined by Nancy B. True, director, and Luz Carty, retiree assistance coordinator, leads guests in a chorus of the Civil Rights Movement anthem “We Shall Overcome.”

The Retiree Division’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Program focused on the civil rights leader’s broader mission for world peace.

Nancy B. True, director of the Retiree Division, welcomed guests by calling King “Our American hero,” and recalling the impact of his assassination when she was 15 years old. “I remember the riots in Roxbury, Massachusetts. As a young person, it was an awakening that the world was not a perfect place. There needed to be people who would speak out.”

Continuing such reflections, Deputy DirectorWinston George noted that King’s first calling was to be a preacher, but he got involved in the civil rights movement, and in the short period from age 26 to 39, when he died, King changed the world.

Robyn Spencer

Guest Speaker Robyn Spencer, assistant professor of History at Lehman College in the Bronx, noted that King’s activism extended to the international stage. She highlighted the theme with examples from “A Time to Break Silence,” a speech that King delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly a year before his death.

“By this point, he had won the Nobel Peace prize and was emboldened to talk about world peace,” said Spencer. In his speech, King decried the war in Vietnam, saying it sapped government resources for an immoral profit motive and drafted black and poor men disproportionately. While the press and President Johnson condemned King for opposing the war, and critics said he was watering down the civil rights movement, King intensified his activism.

Spencer read excerpts from an FBI letter to King written by J. Edgar Hoover, which was found by a scholar last year. The letter encouraged King to commit suicide and tried to blackmail him. He had been under surveillance by the government for years and was labeled “a most dangerous negro.” [sic]

In “A Time to Break Silence,” King said, “I have worked too long now, and too hard to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to turn back to the point of segregating my moral concern.” He added that “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And wherever I see injustice, I’m going to take a stand against it, whether it’s in Mississippi or in Vietnam.”